The transition from individual contributor to first-time manager is a notoriously bumpy ride that requires you to use a muscle you (probably) weren’t trained to flex: helping others grow.

This week, Harry Kraemer, a clinical professor of management and organizations at Kellogg and former chairman and CEO of Baxter International, shares tips to help fledgling leaders stick the landing.

Plus, what makes small businesses hesitant to take advantage of simple opportunities to improve their bottom line?

A more-successful transition into management

In his 40 years in business, Kraemer’s seen new leaders fall into some of the same traps: they micromanage instead of delegating because they’re more comfortable doing everything themselves, for example. And they’re often so focused on being seen as “irreplaceable” that they end up overshadowing their teams. Unfortunately, Kraemer writes, someone who is irreplaceable in a role is not likely to be promoted out of it.

Kraemer writes that the struggles of first-time managers should be a wake-up call for more-experienced leaders to step up and support them. He offers several tips to that end.

First, be a values-based leader, which means constantly reflecting on what matters most so that you can have a positive impact on others. Kraemer’s approach to values-based leadership is anchored in four principles: self-reflection, a balanced perspective, true self-confidence, and genuine humility.

Self-reflection is particularly important because it can help you better understand your own priorities and what matters most to you.

“If you are not self-reflective, how can you know yourself; and if you do not know yourself, how can you lead yourself? And if you cannot lead yourself, how can you possibly lead others?” Kraemer writes.

Another tip for aspiring leaders is to understand that you don’t—and can’t—know everything. Gathering input can provide you with a more balanced perspective and help you correct for blindspots.

“This applies to gathering input from others on the best way to tackle a project, as well as to engage with people who hold different and contradictory views, especially in today’s polarized world,” Kramer writes.

Read more from Kraemer in Forbes.

Why small firms pass up valuable opportunities

Sean Higgins’s recent research grew out of a surprising observation: small businesses don’t always take advantage of simple opportunities to improve their bottom line.

Higgins, a Kellogg associate professor of finance, was consulting with a Mexico-based fintech company that charged merchants a fee for credit-card-payment processing. When a competitor had begun offering a lower fee, the fintech company wanted to test lowering its own fee as well.

“The idea was to shift some customers to card payments by making those payments cheap enough to offset the indirect costs of using cash, like having to handle it and go to the bank frequently,” Higgins says.

But when he helped the company run a pilot study that offered the lower fee to about 11,000 merchants, only about 15 percent opted in.

The result motivated Higgins and collaborators Paul Gertler and Ulrike Malmendier of UC Berkeley and Waldo Ojeda of Columbia to study why small businesses hesitate to act. They designed an experiment to test whether behavioral frictions (such as forgetfulness or failing to think long term) could explain why businesses were resistant to taking certain actions that might benefit them.

They found that several tools significantly increased customers’ likelihood of accepting the offer. Above all, “pre-announced reminders had the largest impact,” Higgins says.

“It has something to do with the fintech company telling merchants on day one that the company is going to do something,” he says, “and then following through and actually doing it.”

Read more about the research in Kellogg Insight.